World Cup Final 781
The World Cup final is over; some ludicrous number of people watched some team beat the other team. The next tournament will be held in Germany in 2006. If you haven't watched the game for whatever reason, obviously you might want to avoid clicking through (or reading any other news site, or talking to anyone...). Neither of those two links should be a spoiler, though.
And for those that did click through, the final standings are up, as are lots and lots of reports about the game.
Re:Brasil! (Score:3, Interesting)
As for tying Pele, it's amazing, and impressive. But you have to remember that Pele spent an entire world cup injured after getting crocked (Brit term for being injured by being harshly marked) in the very first game - and that was when he was in his 20s, I'm sure he'd have scored plenty.
Afterall, this man has scored no less that 92 (count 'em!) hat tricks in his career!
Maradona eat your heart out.
Very nice World Cup, but.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice to see new nations doing great in the World Cup final. Traditionally, it has been a contest between Europe, Argentina and Brazil, while this World Cup has seen Asia and even the US do well, while Africa dissappointed a little, except for Senegal.
This is NOT the best World Cup quality wise though. The standards were imho way better in France 1998 and possibly even USA 1994. The reason might be that the big european stars, or other stars playing in big european clubs looked pretty jaded in this World Cup, possible due to ever increasing amount of highly competitive games in Europe for the best teams, pretty close to the world cup (for instance Champions League).
If you go further back you may need to take into account that the tempo has increased considerably and defensive organization become way better, giving less goals. This is actually a sign of quality, the best leagues almost always have less goals than the poorer ones. This would mean that people might remember more chances and more exciting games, even though the teams would most probably loose against modern teams. Confusing eh?
Re:World == World (Score:2, Interesting)
You can a whole article about it yonder:
http://www.snopes2.com/business/names/worldser.ht
Re:Very nice World Cup, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
> to be 10 yards away from the free kick. And he'll continue to not understand it until the wall is
> completely set up.
Yeah. In the English Premiership, they've nicked a rule from Rugby that if the wall isn't 10 yards, the free kick moves 10 yards closer to the goal. All the players miraculously learnt how far 10 yards is this year - it was like magic...
Gerv
Re:Worst world cup ever!! (Score:2, Interesting)
I have nothing against you country, but you must be nuts if you claim that your refs are half as good or experienced as europeans or south americans. The elite of players deserves the elite of referees. I doubt there are many games in Trinidad & Tobago with over 3000 people
Also, I've seen the replay thousands of times, read newspapers all around the world, etc... and yours is the first opinion I see claming it was fair to disallow the goal. Can you point out any proof of your claims?
Re:Bollox (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't understand modern football do you? Almost all games are close in a World Cup. Brazils 4-0 over China and 5-2 over Costa Rica was exceptions rather than the rule.
The little things settle a modern game of football, like having two totally good goals turned down by the referee (Spain), both which should have settled this game. I never expected Spain to win with more than two goals even if they are a better side than Korea, so having two good goals turned down sure cheats them out of a deserved victory.
The game was then settled on a shootout, which is pretty much a lottery.
Italy also had good goals turned down, in addition to a VERY suspect send off for their star player Totti, into extra time. Even if you look the other way at the badly disallowed goals, they should at LEAST have hold on for a penalty shootout.
The truth is that Korea got helped through two games by bad mistakes from the referee. If it had been only one, then perhaps you could argue that they deserved reaching the semi-finals. But two?
I still don't think there was any corruption involved, just plain old mistakes, but Korea did NOT deserve to be in the semi-finals, and as of that, I'm glad Turkey beat them in the bronze-finals.
I've got nothing against Korea or Koreans, in fact they hosted a great tournament, and was definitely good enough to play with the big boys. I like the fact that there are now "new nations" joining the elite, but they still didn't deserve to reach the semi-finals.
Brazilian Anthem (Score:2, Interesting)
"At the placid shores of the Ipiranga (river),
It was heard the trumbling yell of a brave people,
And the Sun of freedom, with is bright rays,
Shone in the sky of the motherland in this very moment.
If we can afford the guarantees of this equalty
with our strong arms, in your breast, O liberty,
Defy our own chest to death."
Enough for now. The other parts are limited to native Brazilians, only.
Re:Can't understand. (Score:4, Interesting)
And I agree with you: It's a fast-paced, exciting game that people the world over can understand (As opposed to American football's predominant reaction "What the hell's a first down?" or "Why's he got his face in that guy's ass?")
I've always understood that the reason it never caught on in the US is that it's traditionally been hard to televise: You can't schedule time-outs for commercials, and there's only one break in the middle. Besides, it's one of the few games where it's more fun to watch in Spanish, regardless of the language you speak:
Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!! :)
Re:Deeply disappointed by Slashdot (Score:1, Interesting)